bring your final checks tomorrow.” Then she held her breath, praying they would cooperate.
Degan’s uncertainty hardened into belligerence. Annie held her ground, although her stomach was churning. Go, she thought. Just go.
“You heard her,” Fletcher said, standing behind her. “Take a hike.”
Degan let loose with a string of sputtering invectives as he clutched his pants and marched away, heading down the mountain through the woods, toward the parking area by Kyle’s office. Ivan and Carl looked at each other, then at Annie. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at them until they followed Degan.
“Good riddance,” she muttered as they disappeared into the woods. Her heart was beating fast. She’d never been comfortable with drama and conflict.
She and Gordy followed Fletcher into the sugarhouse. Inside, she stood near the fire burning under the evaporator, trying to warm up.
“Hey, thanks, man,” Gordy said, his gaze worshipful as he regarded Fletcher. “That was really cool of you.”
The taller boy gave a shrug. “Don’t thank me. Do yourself a favor and figure out how to quit being a target.”
“I didn’t know I was being a target,” Gordy muttered, staring at the floor. “How am I supposed to know when Degan’s going to go all Lord of the Flies on me?”
“It’s not rocket science,” Fletcher said, an edge of annoyance in his voice. “Look people in the eye and tell them to knock it off.”
The dogs curled up together on their blankets.
Fletcher looked Annie up and down. “You’re soaking wet.”
“Looking him in the eye didn’t really work for me,” she said.
“Do you need to find some dry clothes?”
“It’s warm here by the fire.” She felt a flush rise in her cheeks. Despite her discomfort, she liked the way he was looking at her. Interested but not rude. At least, she hoped he was interested. Most guys gave her a pass, because she didn’t have long, shiny hair or big boobs. She was small in stature, with curly hair that bordered on kinky, and olive-toned skin that didn’t look quite right in Vermont in the winter.
“Wow, it’s awesome in here,” said Gordy. “I’ve never been inside a sugarhouse before.”
Annie raised her eyebrows. “I thought everybody had.” She turned to Fletcher. “What about you? Are you new to sugaring, too?”
He offered a quick flash of a grin. “My idea of syrup comes in a plastic squeeze bottle in the shape of an old lady.”
Annie winced. “That imitation stuff will kill you,” she said. “I don’t even think it’s legal in the state of Vermont. Real maple syrup is pure. There is nothing added and nothing removed, except water.” Her legs felt clammy from the spilled sap, but she ignored the discomfort. There was work to be done and she loved having an audience. Besides, it was a way to shift gears away from the altercation with Degan. “This is where the real stuff is made,” she told them. “We boil down forty gallons of sap to get a gallon of maple syrup.” She showed them how the liquid flowed through the pans. “That’s how it gets sweeter by the minute,” she said.
“Too bad you can’t use that technique on sisters,” said Gordy. “I have gnarly sisters.”
Annie checked the clock on the wall. Nearly dinnertime already, and she’d probably miss out, because the work wasn’t done. “The sap has to be boiled while it’s fresh,” she told them. “That’s why we boil as fast as we can during the season. And that’s why my brother’s going to be ticked off when I tell him I fired three of his guys.”
“He won’t be ticked off when you tell him why,” Gordy pointed out.
She shrugged off the comment. Kyle had a family now; he’d married a woman with two kids. He was definitely more concerned with the bottom line than he was with high school bullies. “We’ll see.”
She showed them how to check the rendered syrup, knowing when it coated the spatula in a certain way that the temperature had reached 219 degrees, ready to be drawn from the finishing pan into barrels. Holding up the grading rack with its four clear bottles, she showed them the four grades of syrup—golden, amber, dark, and very dark.
“They all look good to me,” Fletcher said, but his attention was not on the rack.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Kyle showed up, stomping the snow and mud from his boots on the front step of the sugarhouse. He nodded a greeting at Gordy and Fletcher.
Kyle was eight years older than Annie, a guy’s guy, strong and big-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed like Annie. He was quick to laugh, but sometimes quick to anger. His full-time job was with the Forest Service, but in addition to that, all the operations on Rush Mountain—the sugaring, the orchards and lumber operation—had been his responsibility since he’d turned eighteen and their father had left.
“Things are going fine,” Annie told him. “I should be finished in an hour or so.”
He craned his neck to look out the window. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”
Annie shot a glance at Fletcher, then looked back at her brother. “I sent them packing. They were slackers.”
“Damn it, Annie,” said Kyle, surveying the idle equipment outside. “We’re only halfway through the season. I need all hands on deck.”
“You don’t need slackers,” she said with a sniff. “Hire a different crew.”
“Every sugarbush in the area is shorthanded this year. Where am I going to find more help?” He ripped off his hat and threw it down. “You know what it costs to lose even a day of sugaring.”
“Um, can I make a suggestion?” Gordy said.
“What?” Kyle sounded exasperated.
“My sisters could help out.”
“Your sisters. You’re volunteering your sisters.”
“Well, you’d have to pay them.”
“You know what this work is like,” Kyle said. “Cold, dirty, and backbreaking. Not exactly women’s work.”
Gordy rocked back on his heels. “You haven’t met my sisters.”
Kyle looked skeptical, but he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go call them.”
As they hiked up the hill to find a cell-phone signal, Annie went back to work. “Sorry about him,” she said to Fletcher. “He gets stressed out during the sugar season.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him Degan was being a douche to you?”
“I didn’t want—” She cut herself off. “Good question. I don’t know why. And speaking of those douche bags, aren’t you worried they’re going to retaliate?”
He gave a short laugh. “It won’t keep me
